“Right now, we don’t know too much about the new owner,” he said Tuesday. “The new management hasn’t come around yet and introduced themselves, so it’s hard to get a good impression. We just have to hope for the best.”

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He said all of the merchants he has talked with were waiting to see what happens.

“Retail is not where it should be,” he said. “We are doing OK, but are suffering from lack of foot traffic. All of the merchants are trying to make the best of a bad situation,” Barth said.

Barth said Ford City’s former owner, iStar, had tried to do a good job.

He also expressed concern that one of the first things the new owner did was fire all those employed by the mall.

“Everybody lost their jobs,” he said, “guys that were here 30, 40 years.”

Namdar is a privately held, commercial real estate investment firm that was founded by Igal Namdar in 1999. According to its website, it owns and manages more than 41 million square feet of commercial real estate in the U.S.

In the last four years, the company has averaged more than 20 acquisitions per year.

Those south suburban acquisitions include River Oaks Center in Calumet City, The Landings shopping center in Lansing, Northfield Square in Bourbonnais, the Marketplace of Matteson and Matteson Town Center, both in Matteson. All are managed by Mason.

According to its website, Mason Asset Management is a real estate investment and advisory company with expertise in the acquisition, management, disposition, and leasing of commercial real estate properties throughout the United States. It was founded in 2010 by Nassim.

Since its inception, Mason has built a national portfolio of more than 120 shopping centers, including 45 regional malls, totaling more than 30 million square feet.

Namdar and Mason have been working together to buy and run malls since 2012.

In February, Ford City Mall’s owner, iStar Financial, hired Jones Lang LaSalle to sell the shopping center that it acquired from Sam Zell in late 2012 through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

Zell had acquired the mall in 1987 for about $75 million. He took out a $114.5 million mortgage on the mall in 1993. What’s not known is how much he owed on the loan when iStar, which acquired the debt, seized the property. It’s also unclear how much iStar paid for the debt or how much it was seeking for the mall.

The site was a defense plant during World War II and tested engines for B-29 bombers. The plant closed at the end of the war in 1945 and was idle until it was acquired in 1948 by Preston Tucker and turned into an auto plant.

Tucker produced only 51 cars before it closed.

Ford took over the plant, and it was used to build airplane engines during the Korean War, but it closed in 1959.

In 1961, the site was acquired by developer Harry Chaddick and investors who opened it in 1965 as Ford City shopping center. It was the biggest indoor mall in Chicago outside of downtown and featured anchors such as Wieboldt’s and Montgomery Ward and a tunnel called Peacock Alley.